Sunday 27th July 2025: Introducing “Joyrotica”

Well these thoughts occurred to me as I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep overnight. This was supposed to be a bold post about what we used to call in my house growing up S. E. X but in the cold light of day I am not feeling quite so bold!

Anyway, this is the basic gist: as Christians, I think that we need to write, and talk, joyfully about sex.

What like…erotica?  No, not exactly but (sighs) – let me try to explain!
[Well coming back after writing the post, I have to apologise as my thoughts are a little all over the place.]

Sexual energy?

I have written previously on this blog about my personal struggles with erotica. On one hand, the part of me that is in Christian ministry (by which I mean these blogs I write) wants everyone to know that it’s not an *addiction*, thank you very much!  My pride does not want people to think that this erotica constitutes enough of a problem to cancel out my ministry. Yes, this is hypocritical and perhaps a little self-righteous too but it is entirely human, which is why Jesus was so accurate in calling out such behaviour, because so many of us do it. I’m sure many people in ministry will recognise the urge to minimise our personal failings so as not to cancel out our ministries.

However, it is also true that it is not an addiction.  However to the extent that it happens at all, and with any regularity, then that in itself makes it a problem, and a sin, to be addressed and dealt with, ruthlessly uprooted.

I have been thinking about myself and my sexuality for a long time, trying to understand it. Not just in the light of erotica or sinful thoughts or urges, but trying to understand sex and sexuality generally, and my own sexuality specifically. And all these years I have failed to understand. Until a day or two ago.

So the reason why I am tempted to downplay my erotica habit/struggles is this: most of the time, sometimes for over a month or two, I don’t think about these things *at all*. I am just happily going about my day, smiling to myself thinking about everything else.
Then what will happen is that every so often I will be struck with a thunderbolt of “sexual energy”, and then that is all I can think about! Actually, i say “every so often” but it is actually part of my female hormonal cycle.
And it is in those times that I will reach out to erotica.  And on one hand, please believe me that this stuff is sinful. The kind of things I have read, the kind of things I have gone back and reread, despite knowing how bad and evil they are – I am talking about truly evil stuff. To read something one time is bad enough, because you can argue that you didn’t know how bad it was before reading. But to go back and reread the same thing, sometimes multiple times, after you have seen just how bad it was the very first time – clearly there is no excuse. There are some titles I have reread surely 20 times, possibly as many as 50 times.  Even with that, to be clear, I still have boundaries as to what I will not allow myself to read – just about. However, certain boundaries that I had initially when embarking on this journey have evaporated into thin air. I think that that is common with people who read erotica or watch pornography.

A confession:  On the other hand, the truth is, while I know that this is deeply evil, destructive etc and not of God, I don’t truly feel as guilty about it as I could do.  I don’t sincerely feel any true shame about it, although I would definitely be embarrassed if the content of my reading was exposed! The truth is that a part of me, deep down, kinda…blames God Himself.  “Well Lord these are feelings that You have created me with!” And it is not like I have not made efforts to fulfil these yearnings in legitimate ways (ie through a marriage) – is it?! Part of me thinks “Well how does God expect me to handle these irresistible feelings? It’s not like I am running out to actually sleep with anyone!” Thankfully, I sincerely do not have any yearning for that, and I never have.
To be clear, each time I “fall into sin” I will repent thoroughly, I will pray, I will ask for God’s cleansing. The fact is that I feel as if God Himself does not blame me. And yet if I do not repent etc, I tend to experience painful consequences in my life. So this is definitely sin, and it definitely opens up a portal to demonic attack in my life.

So all this is the reason why I have sat down and tried for so long to understand sex and sexuality and “wrap my head” around all these issues.

Anyway, I think that over the last couple of days, I have finally started to gain some understanding.
When I am hit with a hormonal strike of sexual energy (for want of a better word) that in itself is benign. My problem is that I have taken that sexual energy and channeled it towards erotica, ie lust.  I have subtly been blaming God because it never occurred to me that I could do anything else, other than try to resist…which has always felt futile.
Ah yes, I forgot to say that that has been my general approach, to try to resist sexual thoughts or filling my mind with things that could generate sexual thoughts, filling my heart with the Bible. And honestly, that works for the most part. As I wrote above I never think about these issues, my mind is generally a sexually pure place…Until I get a hormonal strike.  Which is why I tend to blame God, deep deep down. Clearly this is not about me! This is not about my predisposition or lack of disciple. Rather Lord, these are the hormones that YOU have given me!

Anyway, what I’ve finally realised is that l can actually choose to channel this sexual energy positively, ie, not towards lust.  Honestly, it does not even need to be channeled in a sexual or romantic direction at all. However, if I did want to channel it towards my marriage, I could for instance pray about the friendship in our marriage.

Aha, that makes me remember something else!
As I say, I have been trying to understand sex and sexuality for a long time. One of the big questions I have been asking myself is this: as a Christian, is it permissible to pursue sexual gratification as an end in itself (in marriage), not just as a byproduct of making love? If anyone out there is in any doubt, with sex, there is a distinct difference between making love, which is about showing tenderness to your spouse sexually, and seeking sexual pleasure in its own right. One is about giving (making love) while the other is about unapologetically taking, where the emphasis is not on tenderness at all.  Many Christians seem to suggest or assert that as Christians making love is the only legitimate way of having sex, that even in marriage it is wrong, unwise or even sinful altogether to pursue sexual pleasure in its own right.

Now, I have to offer the proviso that I myself am not married. Undoubtedly there will be things that I understand better once I myself hopefully get married and start hopefully experiencing everything that marriage offers. I know that it might sound somewhat arrogant for me, as a single woman, to contradict something about marriage asserted by people who are actually married from their own experience of marriage. However, to me it just cannot be right that sexual pleasure is only to be enjoyed as a byproduct of making love. It’s just too much fun! To me it goes without question that it must be good and acceptable and absolutely fine to just want to enjoy sex for its own sake. To like sex, to pursue it like any other hobby. That said, whenever I tried to sit down and think about it, think through it, reason I would always end up back in a place of lust, then have to start repenting, praying, fasting etc. So I can understand why people might be quick to conclude  that there is no holy way of pursuing sexual gratification in its own right, but I knew that it could not be true, so I kept persevering!

I think the key is that it must all be built on an ongoing foundation of love offered to your spouse. If this is indeed true that it is fine to pursue sexual pleasure, then it is also perfectly fine to deliberately choose a spouse based at least in part on sexual compatibility, ie how much they like sex and how much time they would be willing to spend engaged in it, or how adventurous they are willing to be, how open they might be to kinky experimentation – cough – eg whips and chains  – as I say I have read some stuff, my people! And not just once or twice, either!
I definitely do not believe that “anything goes” sexually even within the Biblical boundaries of a loving, exclusive, faithful marriage.  But within Biblical New Testament boundaries perhaps it is up to each couple to define their own limitations.

Now as Christians, we are not to be having sex before marriage. So it will be a matter of asking potential spouses or otherwise deducing how much they think they will like sex etc. IE, perhaps the theory and the fantasies are one thing, when they are based on picture perfect people with perfect bodies etc. However the practice with real human beings and real human bodies and health conditions, occasional bad breath or body odour etc might not be quite so compelling. As an aside, because of the prevalence of online porn, these days, for the first time ever, it is now a recognised phenomenon that some people, especially men, eschew sex with real tangible human beings, in favour of pornography. These people are known as pornosexuals.  I have read so many accounts of women who feel rejected because their men prefer the favours of the perfect women on screen to their own real life flesh and blood bodies. Or how about people who are now wanting to marry AI. And we are not even talking about AI robots. Rather we are talking about fake personas rendered by software….

Even with all this though, I am sure that there are still people out there who like sex.  If you do have a strong libido and you do happen to find a spouse who is compatible with you in this way, it occurred to me that a little counterintuitively, between the pair of you you need to work even harder at building a strong friendship. Very counterintuitively, for want of a better phrase right now, I would even call it a “sexless friendship”. Obviously if you plan or hope to be having sex, and a lot of it, then ultimately the friendship between you cannot truly be called sexless. What I mean by “sexless friendship” is that if you were to take away sex, if for whatever reason you were not able to have sex any more, then the friendship between you could still exist and thrive in its own right and be mutually nourishing. So this is the kind of friendship where you truly care about one another, work hard to understand one another, work so much on your communication etc, sincerely put one another first.  Furthermore this is something that you have to commit to on an ongoing basis within your marriage. The kind of things that we will be doing to one another, to one another’s bodies, the kinds of requests we will be making of one another, the kind of awkwardness that we will regularly be putting ourselves through will require us to know how to be vulnerable with one another, how to truly talk to one another about difficult subjects, even how to argue graciously, how to be intimate and yet still maintain boundaries with one another. A thought has just struck me, for possibly the first time ever that I remember: that there is likely to be a lot of awkwardness after the fact of each sexual session. Yeah, by this point we’ll be married, but I can imagine a little later, perhaps at a mealtime, being embarrassed by looking at this man and thinking of all the things I have just asked him to do, and remembering all the things he has equally asked of me.  I can imagine looking at him, and wondering whether he too is thinking of that one particular incident, whether he even noticed it. I still can’t believe that…This kind of thing will need to be handled so sensitively.

It is this strong foundation that will be necessary for all the holy hanky-panky in your marriage. To the extent that you want to keep having lots of hanky-panky, then you need to keep investing into this foundation to keep it strong. I suspect that for many people who like sex and are happy to have a very sexual marriage, this is where they go wrong. They neglect to invest in their foundation of their friendship, assuming they actually cultivated a genuine friendship in the first place. So they might just try to keep taking indefinitely from their marriage sexually without ever replenishing their friendship, and then one day, they find out that the sex just runs out, or grows stale, or offers no true gratification any longer. They grow bored or dissatisfied with one another, and perhaps start seeking greener pastures outside their marriage.

Lust is about taking or grabbing for your own gratification which is why it is not true that “anything goes” within marriage. The Latin word rapere, from which we get our word “rape”, literally means “to grab”.  If you as a spouse are just taking all the time without any true concern for your spouse, or any true desire to serve them, then that is how a marriage falls into lust.

To go back to thinking about sexual energy strikes one big question I have had is how to deal in a holy productive way that honours God with my sexual yearnings before marriage. Everything kinda clicked into place, and I realised that it is in the context of a strong friendship and intentional love towards one another that a couple can boldly and unapologetically explore sexual pleasure in its own right being confident that they are honouring God and one another. So a productive way of channeling sexual energy when it strikes might be possibly to sit down and think about I might seek to build my friendship with my husband, or seek to serve him in a non-sexual way.  I was thinking that in a marriage, to work on their friendship, couples could go on explicitly non-sexual dates where they just focus on their friendship. Perhaps you could dedicate one friendship date to one spouse this time, and then the next friendship date to  the other spouse next time, so that both spouses will feel heard, appreciated, valued within the marriage on a consistent ongoing basis.  (Depending on how very sexual the marriage might be, who knows, in practice sexless dates might rarely remain sexless, but hey, at least we tried, right?!)  Anyway a healthy non-sexual way of channeling sexual energy might be to think ahead to these dates, think about the sorts of questions you could ask your spouse, how you might listen to them, how you might seek to put them first.  IE use that sexual energy not to think about taking as such, even though there is nothing inherently wrong with taking in a consensual, mutually nourishing marriage. Rather, use that energy to imagine investing into a strong friendship which could then be the basis of the sexual fireworks that you dream of.  So in this way, the sexual energy could strike, and you could channel it in a way that never risks falling into lust but all the same still contributes to the hope of an amazing sex life.

Prior to this, many of the ways I have previously channeled that energy have been outright wrong – filling my head through erotica with illicit encounters that could never be OK or redeemed, for instance occurring between people that could never legally or acceptably be sexual partners.

As Christians we know that sex itself is not bad…in theory.  We know that sex within marriage is good and holy… in theory. In practice, people say that there is so much shame associated with premarital sex, so much pressure to avoid it that that unavoidably spills into marriage, the place where sex should be enjoyed and celebrated.  As a consequence, many Christians, possibly even most Christians, continue to think of sex as something inherently dirty and shameful, even within marriage.

And yet, we still experience sexual energy strikes. But unfortunately, here is the thing. Christians don’t talk about sex! Other than to say “Don’t do it!” But as we as Christians still experience sexual energy strikes what then happens is that as Christians we reach out for whatever is available, which is all the lust-filled pornography or erotica written without any intention of glorifying Christ, and we fill our heads with that instead. I believe that this might be why there is so much sexual sin in the church, why there are so many shameful sexual incidents.  Because we as Christians have the same natural urges as everyone else. However we are taught or we fall into thinking that even the holy ways of expressing those urges are somewhat tainted or dirty. This then allows sexual yearnings to build up until the point where they explode, sometimes catastrophically.

So then, that leads me to the topic of “Christian erotica”. So then, the question is this: should Christians be reading, or writing Christian erotica, as an alternative to lust-filled, illicit stuff produced without any intention of honouring or glorifying Christ, so that we as Christians would have positive ways of channeling our sexual energy strikes? I believe that the answer to that question is no, but….OR not exactly, however…I’m now at the place of thinking that as Christians we need to write joyfully about sex. Not actually erotica and definitely not visual pornography, not being that explicit. Unlike erotica, not going into details about body parts, not intended to titillate, or offer sexual gratification. Definitely not offering any imagery or videos.  Rather, offering a holy, Christ-honouring way of channeling sexual energy strikes. This is reclaiming what belongs to us! Contrary to popular opinion, contrary to what many people in the Church itself apparently believe, it was God, rather than the devil, who actually created sex. And He created it to be beautiful, pleasurable, mutually satisfying. So why have we let it devolve into a thing of shame?

So then, this is what I propose: Joyrotica.  A holy, Christian alternative that is not ashamed of sex, but still rejects lust or anything sexually destructive. Perhaps I will have to sit down and think about what that in practice entails. Is it OK, for instance, to talk about feelings, yearnings, to go into detail about them?  Is it OK to write fiction, to possibly construct ongoing fiction around fictional characters?  How much detail can we go into?

Guess what?  I have already written joyrotica!
I am talking about my story called Nidhra and Pradha.  The characters are not explicitly Christian, but they are married. At the time, I was a little embarrassed as an unmarried woman to be talking so boldly about “lovemaking”, but now I see that it was actually a good thing.
OK, if I am to be honest, in addition to this I have actually written actual marital erotica too, ie going into explicit detail, but my spirit realised that it was much too explicit, so I neglected to publish it.  Perhaps as a single woman moving forward I will leave it to married people to write the joyrotica. Actually, no, I’ve got it! As a single woman, I will write about people who like me are single looking forward into marriage!

Anyway, I am going to leave it here for now while I possibly think about it some more.